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Red Tide dampens tourism

July marked the first decline in the number of visitors since last year's spate of hurricanes.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published September 15, 2005

NORTH REDINGTON BEACH - The VACANCY sign was lit, The Price is Right was on the office TV and one car was in the parking lot.

Marion TenEyck, who manages the 30-unit Sea Rocket motel, said if it wasn't for Bob Barker, the boredom would drive her crazy. Her guest list Wednesday morning - one person.

"Two words," she said. "Red Tide."

The toxic algae ruined business in July, she said, and the motel is still trying to recover. At one point around the Fourth of July, TenEyck had to dig nearly a dozen holes in the sand to bury the piles of dead fish she found behind the beachfront motel. One of the guests who came for the holiday, a pregnant woman, had to leave. One of the owners toughed it out, but hasn't been back since.

"July was just horrendous," she said.

Statistics released Wednesday confirm her assessment.

In the first hard evidence of Red Tide's effect on Pinellas County's biggest industry, the number of visitors fell slightly in July compared to the same month last year, according to a report released to the county's Tourist Development Council.

The decrease was small - with nearly 4,000 fewer visitors or a decline of 0.7 percent from the 560,555 people who came in July 2004. The number of visitors staying in hotels or other accommodations fell more than 5,200, or 1.7 percent, from 303,610 a year earlier.

But July marked the first monthly year-to-year decline since last September, when Florida was in the middle of a series of hurricanes. Since then, Pinellas had consecutive months of growing tourist numbers, ranging from 3 percent in December 2004 to 7.5 percent in March.

The biggest reason behind July's drop was the presence of Red Tide on Pinellas beaches during the Fourth of July weekend, said Carole Ketterhagen, executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Visitors from Florida and other Southeastern states showed the largest declines. The tourists who typically drive rather than fly to Pinellas are more likely to plan or cancel trips on short notice, Ketterhagen said. Some simply cut their stays short.

"Fourth of July was the most adversely affected by the Red Tide, the worst weekend," she said.

Everything considered, she said, the month was "not bad" with visitor numbers off less than 1 percent for the county. But August's numbers are expected to be down, she added.

Other numbers reflected the July downturn. Room nights were down nearly 5 percent from July 2004. Collections from the county's 4 percent bed tax on visitor accommodations fell 2.4 percent to $1.55-million.

Factors besides Red Tide also contributed to the decline, said Walter Klages of Klages Group, which compiles monthly numbers for the convention and visitor bureau. News of early season hurricanes swirling in the Atlantic and Caribbean kept some visitors away. And the conversion of small hotels and motels to residential condos left fewer rooms for tourists, he said.

Jessica Pernell, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, said concentration levels of Red Tide along Pinellas beaches around July 4 ranged from a high reading along Clearwater Beach to a low reading along Indian Rocks Beach.

A week later, the levels had changed, a function of shifting winds and water currents. Nowhere has that change been more evident than at Redington Pier. Most of the weekly readings in July were low. But on July 25, the reading was medium. In successive weeks, the readings went to low, back to medium, back to low, back to medium and back to low.

"And it (Red Tide) is still out there," Pernell said. "There just hasn't been one sustained reading in any one location."

The effects of Red Tide on hotel guests appear to be equally erratic.

A few miles south of the Sea Rocket, at the Miramar Beach Resort in St. Pete Beach, manager Angie Ertel said that except for a few cancellations, business in July was excellent.

"It (Red Tide) was the worst I've ever seen," Ertel said. "But people still came. I don't know how they stood it, but they stayed.

"What saved us was the beach clean-up every night."

--Times staff writer Tom Zucco contributed to this report. Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified September 15, 2005, 01:04:09]